Updated 1320 GMT (2120 HKT) July 7, 2022
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Why would a prime minister risk his leadership by appointing an alleged predator to a minor role in his government? Why lie about it when, inevitably, his folly was found out?
The answer is not that the miscreant Christopher Pincher was particularly close or important to Johnson; he wasn't. Instead, both the inability to abide by the norms which bind everyone else and the casual and foolish falsehood which followed speak to flaws in Johnson's makeup. Since childhood Johnson seems to have found it easier to reach for a preposterous lie than tell an obvious truth -- and has yet to meet a rule he didn't seek to break.
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he was likeable; charming. People wanted him to succeed, and were disposed to look the other way when what he said didn't quite add up. That in turn fed his habit; if people seemed prepared to go along with the pretense, what motivation did he have for sticking to the awkward truth?
By the time he landed at Oxford University as a dilettante undergraduate, he had become a master of the brazen falsehood.
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As a young journalist, Johnson was fired by The Times for inventing a quote from his godfather, the historian Sir Colin Lucas.
Having landed a role with the rival Telegraph despite this, he made his name by filing absurd, because largely untrue, reports from Brussels about the apparent iniquities of the European Union.
He entered politics on a lie -- having promised when he took on the editorship of the Spectator magazine that he had no ambitions to become an MP, he did just that.
He lied to his many wives, girlfriends and mistresses. He lied about his children (until recently it was unclear even how many he had).
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Lying is a habit as natural to him as telling the truth comes easily to most people
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No one in his party was unaware of Johnson's habit of playing fast and loose with the truth when he became Prime Minister three years ago; for them, his ability to win elections and "Get Brexit Done," as his 2019 election rallying call went, was more important than installing a leader who could be trusted to tell the truth.
Better to read the full article at: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/07/opini...index.html